Relationship of Foraging Strategy and Social Organization in Western Lowland Gorillas

该奖项将用于在中非共和国蒙迪卡研究中心继续对西部低地大猩猩(大猩猩)行为生态学的长期研究。这项研究的主要长期目标是确定生态和社会因素的变化是否和/或如何影响大猩猩的社会性，以便评估目前的灵长类社会生态学模型。具体地说，西部低地大猩猩食用的食物(沼泽中的水果和水生草本植物)比山地大猩猩丰富的陆地草本植物更难在环境中找到。当前的社会生态学思想表明，食物可获得性的差异可能会导致群体内部和群体之间的竞争差异，这反过来又会影响社会行为的性质。目前，这些问题还无法解决，因为尽管人们对山地大猩猩进行了广泛的研究，但对野生西部低地大猩猩的了解很少。在这项研究中，研究人员将首先让两个大猩猩群体适应蒙迪卡的人的存在，以便除了研究资源可获得性(分布、丰度和密度)外，还将研究它们的觅食策略和社会行为。这些信息将有助于确定资源可获得性在塑造非洲类人猿社会行为中的作用，这反过来将对理解不同的生态因素如何影响我们早期人类祖先的社会性具有根本重要性。

This award will be used to continue a long-term study on the behavioral ecology of the western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) at the Mondika Research Center, Central African Republic. The primary long-term goal of the study is to determine whether and/or how variation in ecological and social factors influences gorilla sociality, in order to evaluate current models of primate socioecology. Specifically, western lowland gorillas consume foods (fruit and aquatic herbs in swamps) that are more difficult to locate in the environment, compared to the abundant terrestrial herbs of mountain gorillas. Current socioecological thought suggests that differences in food availability may lead to differences in competition within and between groups, and that this in turn will influence the nature of social behavior. Currently, these questions cannot be addressed, because although mountain gorillas have been studied extensively, little is known about western lowland gorillas in the wild. In this study, the researchers will initially habituate two gorilla groups to the presence of people at Mondika, in order to conduct studies of their foraging strategy and social behavior, in addition to studies of resource availability (distribution, abundance and density). This information will allow determination of the role of resource availability in shaping social behavior in African apes, which will in turn, be fundamentally important in understanding how differing ecological factors influenced sociality in our earlier human ancestors.